The exec statement in Python can be used to run code sourced from somewhere at runtime. However, it's important that the line endings are \n, not \r\n.

I was loading code from a database at runtime, and I had a problem where running the script resulted in a Syntax Error. When the code is run manually, it's fine.

I found out that this was a problem by using repr(lMapping) which shows what the line endings are.

I solved the problem using by changing the line endings after loading from the database:

lMapping = lMapping.replace('\r\n','\n')
exec lMapping